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Flush off reporting a record 2012 profit, JP Morgan Chase sold its largest bond deal in four years.

The $6bn offering matches mega-deals from Goldman Sachs on Wednesday and Bank of America last week. No deals have topped $6bn this year.

Big banks are jumping on improved perceptions among investors to knock out 2013 funding needs as many strategists encourage investors to increase their holdings in the financial sector. That has helped push the average yield on financial sector debt to 2.55%, down from 4.32% a year ago, according to Barclays.

"Banks have strong revenues, strong profits and strong capital positions," said Brian Jacobsen, chief portfolio strategist at Wells Fargo Funds Management. He has been recommending investors bulk up on bank bonds for about a year.

Investors say putting that recommendation into practice hasn't been so easy. While overall corporate debt issuance hit a record $1.05 trillion last year, financial sector issuance reached a nine-year low in 2011 and rose modestly last year, according to data provider Dealogic.

"There's been a dearth of bank issuance," said Don Jones, managing director of fixed income at Sterne Agee. He said when investors have the opportunity to add to their bank holdings in the new issue market, they come in droves.

While banks have until recently issued fewer bonds, they are also taking steps to reduce debt burdens through buybacks or by retiring debt. Bank of America, for instance, said yesterday it reduced its long-term debt by nearly $100bn in 2012.

What makes JP Morgan's offering notably different from its rivals' is the $2bn piece of five-year, floating rate notes, a type of debt that sees interest payments reset every three months. Most floating rate notes mature in three years or less.

Rising interest rates eat into returns on bonds, and, with rates very low and likely to climb higher, investors are increasingly looking for ways to protect their portfolios.

For borrowers, floating rate notes can potentially offer a lower borrowing cost, so other banks are likely to follow suit, said Jones. "It's good that a bellwether like JP Morgan came to market," he said. "That helps to set the pricing tone."

Along with four other deals yesterday, the JP Morgan offering put the month's tally of high-grade sales at about $90bn.

That outpaces the $88.5bn sold in all of January last year and approaches the five-year average for the month's volume of $96bn, according to data provider Dealogic.